It is hard to believe that just a few years ago - in 2019 and at the beginning of 2020 - many Belarusians were waiting for the future transition of power promised by Lukashenko and counting on quick liberalization.

Today, at the beginning of 2023, Belarusian citizens are witnessing and participating in a completely different kind of transition: the regime that existed for more than two decades in the form of relatively benign authoritarianism is finally turning into a full-fledged Stalinist-type totalitarian regime.

On one of the last days of the past year, December 29, the mouthpiece of the official propaganda "SB.

Belarus today", commenting on the fall of a Ukrainian rocket in a field near the village of Poles in the Yanav district, offered its "asymmetric response" to the West:

"...Each next one - to each of the incredible ones!

— the sentenced prison term should be aggravated by the addition of a couple of years just for the morning of December 29, 2022 over the village of Garbakha in Palestia."

The reasoning is as follows:

"No one has any doubt that it was our fugitives, protestors and fighters who brought this moment closer?

What are they rejoicing about now, foolish mankurts?

That their omnivorous mouths have been and will be used for provocations..."

Similar appeals from the pages of "SB.

Belarus today" during the last two and a half years have been perceived by the penal apparatus in Belarus almost as a directive.

There is little doubt that this is exactly what their "asymmetric response" will be.

And not only at the Ukrainian missile that accidentally flew into Belarusian territory.

Practically - for any serious challenge that the regime faces.

How to take revenge on the West for the introduction of economic sanctions?

The destruction of civil society.

Who is to blame for the increasingly obvious decline of the economy, inflation and a decrease in real wages?

"Runaways" and their leaders.

How to demonstrate your complete submission and loyalty to Moscow?

Harsh sentences for political prisoners - especially those who protested against the war or tried to stop Russian military echelons.

And there are no other answers to time challenges in the regime.

Security forces on the streets of Minsk, November 1, 2020

And when Lukashenko in his New Year's address obliges his fellow citizens to "first of all respect and value the work of people in uniform" - then he outlines the main vector in which Belarus will move in the near future.

And this vector is the extermination of those enemies who, for some reason, have not yet been subjected to repression.

Alexander Lukashenko attends the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Council in Bishkek.

December 9, 2022

Deceptive shine of perestroika and publicity

This is a very serious test for society.

The current generations have never encountered anything like this in their lives.

There are almost no prisoners of Stalin's camps left today.

Meanwhile, thousands and thousands of Belarusians are destined to repeat that experience.

Experience traumatic and painful, and sometimes tragic.

I remember the second half of the 80s, when the second (after Khrushchev) attempt was made in Soviet society to rethink and draw conclusions from the history of Stalin's repressions.

The Moscow-sanctioned flow of "publicity" seemed to break through all the totalitarian floodgates forever.

Thousands of publications, films, documentary evidence.

The discovery of Kurapatov and hundreds of similar places in other regions...

Monument to Gulag victims in St. Petersburg, 2016

And I still remember a conversation with an uncle from the village of Slutsk, whom I found with great difficulty, through the Police Department and the village council, in order to interview him for "Lima".

The uncle was interesting because he spent 15 years in various camps in Siberia and the Far East, he was released three times and imprisoned three times - first as a kulak, then as a Polish spy, the last time - for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.

My uncle managed to survive and return to his native village in the late 50s.

Without a doubt, he remembered and knew everything interesting.

But I did not succeed in interviewing him.

He categorically refused to tell anything.

No matter how I tried to convince him, referring to the publications "Ogonka" and "LiMa".

I remember that I was extremely impressed at the time.

It seemed that society then perceived Stalin's repressions as distant history, as a dark page from a school textbook - something like serfdom or the Crimean War.

And then this uncle with a disbelieving look and his strange parting phrase: "Don't you understand that all that can come back?"

Repeating something like that seemed impossible and unbelievable then.

Solzhenitsyn was returning from exile;

Sakharov spoke from the rostrum of the Congress of People's Deputies;

The "Solovetsky stone" commemorating the victims of the Gulag appeared on Lubyanka, near the main building of the KGB.

In its declaration of November 19, 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR solemnly announced:

"Memory brings us back with particular bitterness to the tragic years of Stalin's repressions.

Lawlessness and arbitrariness did not bypass any republic, any nation.

The past mass arrests, camp martyrdom, destitute women, old people and children in resettlement zones continue to appeal to our conscience and insult our moral sense.

This cannot be forgotten... The Supreme Soviet of the USSR guarantees that the violation of human rights and norms of humanity at the state level will never happen again in our country."

Procession on Kuropaty and rally on "Dziady", 2019

Who now remembers those guarantees and that declaration?

The current generations of Belarusians after 2020 imperceptibly found themselves on a new turn of the historical spiral - exactly in the conditions in which their grandparents had to exist during the Stalinist years.

A country of stable repression and violence

Today, two and a half years after the events of 2020, few people are happy with the hope that political repression in Belarus can be quickly curtailed.

The number of political prisoners in the country is steadily and steadily growing, court sentences in political cases are becoming increasingly harsh.

The regime has clearly become popular: it is easy and convenient to manage and manipulate a frightened society.

It can be expected that the government plans to enter the 2024 election campaign in conditions where it will not have any competitors - there will be no one to speak a word of criticism or dissatisfaction.

What is comforting and leaves some hope: there are not many loyal supporters of the new totalitarian regime in Belarus.

Still, in Stalin's USSR, political repression was given an ideological rationale: according to Stalin, the overthrown classes should strengthen their resistance as socialism was built.

To get ahead of class enemies, you need to destroy them.

Whether the specific "enemy of the people" is guilty or not is a secondary issue.

If he is not guilty today, he will be guilty tomorrow.

And therefore any violence (including preventive) was considered completely justified.

Beaten participants of the protests of 2020

In today's Belarus, the same principle applies when persecuting those suspected of disloyalty or dissent.

With one significant difference.

In the Stalinist USSR, all this was covered by a lofty ideological goal - the construction of a classless society, an earthly paradise for working people, the liberation of proletarians all over the world.

And how to explain the necessity of current political repressions to today's Belarusian society?

Because it cannot be allowed to be like in the West, where people choose their own power?

Otherwise, the "fugitives" will overthrow the lifelong dictatorship of the 70-year-old pensioner, who brought the country to a state in which a person is afraid of his own shadow?

The most upsetting thing is that thousands and thousands of Belarusians, who are not ready for such violence and such trials, have fallen under this ice rink and may fall into it in the near future.

Among the rapid flow of events in 2020, many did not immediately manage to orientate themselves: the transition from a relatively mild authoritarianism to a brutal Stalinist-type dictatorship in Belarus happened rapidly, literally in a few months.

And today it is difficult to imagine how a frightened, paralyzed society can somehow influence the situation on its own.

There is every hope that something will radically change beyond the southern or eastern borders of Belarus, that Lukashenko will lose the Kremlin's support as a result of the changes in Russia.

But even in this case, is there a guarantee that rapid changes in Belarus are inevitable?

Armed security forces disperse the protest march.

2020

It is generally believed that it is impossible to sit "on the bayonets" for a long time.

The image is beautiful and eloquent, but it is often not confirmed by historical examples.

The harsh Stalinist dictatorship in the USSR was maintained by the violence of the special services until the tyrant's last breath.

But this is a huge empire that scared the world with its military power.

And is a small Stalinist dictatorship capable of longevity — isolated from its neighbors, economically weak, without external support?

There is also such an example - it is the communist dictatorship in Albania, which existed after the Second World War for more than forty years.

"There was order with Enver!"

Albanian dictator

Enver Hoxha

was a staunch Stalinist, and he transferred all Stalinist practices of seizing and holding power to his small Balkan country with almost mirror-like precision.

It seemed that after the death of Stalin, when the Khrushchev thaw swept over the entire communist Eastern Europe, Albania was also doomed to begin liberalization.

Enver Khoja

But the Stalinist Hoxha said: no!

And isolated his little Stalinist dictatorship from the whole world.

Neighbors - Greece and Yugoslavia - were considered staunch enemies.

The Soviet Union and almost all other former socialist allies are traitors to Stalin's great cause.

Relations were maintained only with Maoist China and the Romanian dictator Ceausescu (in the late 1970s, Albania had a quarrel with China, which at that time had already started reforms. The former friends were declared "a gang of opportunists and mercenaries of the West").

...In the 1970s and 1980s, looking for Radio Svaboda or Voice of America through the noise and crackle of jammers, one could often stumble upon the Russian-language Radio Tirana.

It was an entertaining historical journey to the country of the builders of Stalin-style communism.

In the broadcasts it was possible to hear that the vigilant special services ("Sigurimi") had exposed another gang of Khrushchevites or Tsitovites (Albanian analogue of the Trotskyists);

that at the next construction of communism, the leaders of production receive an additional bowl of rice or new pants for their work achievements;

that a new monument to Stalin was opened in the country...

Thousands of Albanians tear down the statue of Enver Hoxha.

1991

Many people in communist Albania were actually starving.

Since 1968, Albanians have been forbidden to own a car, summer house, listen to rock music, wear jeans... And the dictatorship held on.

After all four decades of Hoxha's undivided power in the country, political repressions did not stop: they exposed revisionists, opportunists, traitors in the leadership of the army, and Titoites in the office...

Even in the last period of his reign, when he was seriously ill, the dictator did not remove his hands from the guillotine.

On December 17, 1981, under mysterious circumstances,

Meghmet Shegu

, who was considered the second figure in the Albanian communist leadership and a contender for the main position in case of Hoxha's dismissal, died unexpectedly.

Shegu was declared a traitor and conspirator.

Enver Hoxha died quietly in a hospital bed on April 11, 1985 at the age of 76.

At that time, Gorbachev's perestroika had already begun in the USSR.

Eastern Europe was waking up from a lethargic sleep and preparing its "velvet revolutions".

And Albania could not recover from the dark decades of dictatorship for five long years.

In 1986, mourning was announced there for the death of Stalin's narcomo Molotov, and in 1988, monuments and museums were opened on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the deceased dictator Khoja.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama (right) speaks during a press conference at the EU-Western Balkans Summit in Tirana, December 6, 2022

...At the beginning of the 21st century, Albania ceased to be a black spot on the map of Europe, a Balkan anomaly.

In 2009, it joined NATO, since 2014 it is an official candidate for membership in the European Union.

Immediately, monuments to the dictator disappeared from Albanian towns and villages, his museums were closed, and his role in the national history was duly assessed as a bloody tyrant and criminal.

And even the grave of the "great perpetuator of Stalin's cause" was moved from the Alley of Heroes in the center of Tirana to the outskirts of the public cemetery.

But it took several dozen years for all this.

And even today, when the horrors of the dictatorship are far behind, from elderly Albanians who tend to complain about today's problems, yes, no, you will hear: "You are not welcome.

There was order under Enver!".

The opinions expressed in the blogs represent the views of the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editors.